1. Field of Invention
An exemplary embodiment of the present invention relates to a liquid crystal display and an electronic apparatus.
2. Description of Related Art
A related art transflective liquid crystal display uses ambient light in a well-lighted environment, similarly to a reflective liquid crystal display. On the other hand, in a poorly-lighted environment, the transflective liquid crystal display makes display visible with a backlight, similarly to a transmissive liquid crystal display. A typical transflective liquid crystal display includes a liquid crystal layer disposed between an upper substrate and a lower substrate. The inner surface of the lower substrate is provided with a reflective film made of metal, such as aluminum. The reflective film has an opening to transmit light and functions as a transflector. In this case, in the reflective mode, ambient light incident on the upper substrate passes through the liquid crystal layer, is reflected by the reflective film on the inner surface of the lower substrate, passes through the liquid crystal layer again, exits from the upper substrate, and then reaches the viewer. On the other hand, in the transmissive mode, the light from the backlight incident on the lower substrate passes through the liquid crystal layer via an opening in the reflective film, exits from the upper substrate, and then reaches the viewer. Therefore, with regard to the region where the reflective film is provided, the region where the opening is provided constitutes a transmissive display region, and the other region constitutes a reflective display region.
However, the related art transflective liquid crystal display has a problem in that the viewing angle in the transmissive display mode is narrow. This is because the optical design flexibility is restricted. Since the transflector is provided on the inner surface of the liquid crystal cell in order not to produce parallax, reflective display needs to be performed with only one polarizer provided at the viewer side. In order to address or solve this problem, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2002-350853 discloses a novel transflective liquid crystal display including vertically aligned liquid crystal. It has the following characteristics:
(1) A “VA (vertical alignment) mode” is adopted. In the VA mode, molecules of liquid crystal with negative dielectric anisotropy are aligned vertically with respect to the substrate, and then tilted by an applied voltage.
(2) A “multi-gap structure” is adopted. In the multi-gap structure, the thickness of the liquid crystal layer (cell gap) is different between the transmissive display region and the reflective display region (see, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 11-242226).
(3) An “alignment division structure” is adopted. The transmissive display region is a regular octagon in shape. A projection is provided in the center of the transmissive display region on the opposite substrate so that the liquid crystal molecules are tilted radially in all directions in the transmissive display region.